All-City Musical

Today was super exciting because I got to see a free performance at Playhouse Square in the Ohio Theater of this year's All-City Musical, Aida (a story about a love triangle between and Egyptian princess, an Egyptian nobleman and a Nubian slave). The All-City Musical is an annual event run by Great Lakes Theater that allows students from all over the Cleveland Metropolitan School District to participate in a professional production at Playhouse Square. This is especially wonderful considering that many of those schools don't have good arts programs, or may not have arts programs at all. The show I saw today was technically a dress rehearsal, so there were plenty of technical issues (but that was to be expected). The actors, however, were spectacular, and they really had a lot of talent. Many of them had astonishingly good voices. Although I thought the plot was not that strong, I really enjoyed the actors' performances and the large amount of time it must have taken to pull a show like that together. I also got a chance to usher the performance today, since their were other Cleveland schools coming to see Aida, which was exciting since I have never ushered before. The other big event of the day was that I got to sit in on a meeting about GLT's summer theater camp program, for all ages. The discussion I heard before I had to leave was mostly about the varied activities that the campers will be participating in, such as writing and acting out their own fables or practicing classic scenes and monologues, or perfecting their audition technique. Overall, it was a very fun and busy day!